


What The Mayflies Leave Behind

by evilqueenofgallifrey (MayFairy)



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Someone had to write it, implied genderfluid Ashildr, written before FtR aired so probably not canon compliant but ah well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 01:24:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5072572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayFairy/pseuds/evilqueenofgallifrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time she meets the promised Captain Jack Harkness, he's so unaware of his own curse she can barely look at him. The second time, he knows all too well, but is not yet ready. The third time, he stretches out his hand and she takes it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1903

It's another three hundred and fifty two years before she again hears the name Captain Jack Harkness. She's in a pub, dressed as a man, and at first it's just another name in the round of introductions being made at the next table over. But then it clicks and her head snaps around to see a handsome man with a large grin shaking another man's hand.

Her initial survey of him has her doubting if she in fact heard correctly. He is too cheerful, his eyes not containing the weight of someone such as herself. But then she cannot pretend to know him, and the Doctor is a time traveller who did not explain anything further about him. It could be that he is not immortal yet.

She waits a while, but when someone addresses him as Jack she knows in her gut that her hearing was right and that one way or another, he is the one the Doctor mentioned. A boisterous American is not what she had hoped for, but she'll take what she can get after having waited several centuries.

Due to a millennia of life, her patience is sometimes unparalleled, but this is not one of those times. She downs her drink and makes her way over to the table.

"Captain Jack Harkness," she says, to be absolutely sure, and he turns around to look at her curiously. The others guffaw at so small a young man addressing their companion out of the blue, but there is no lack of kindness in the captain's eyes.

"Who wants to know?" He asks.

"I believe we have a mutual acquaintance."

His eyes are guarded and give nothing away. "Oh yeah? Who?"

She holds his gaze. "The Doctor, of course." The transformation is instant - he sits up straighter and looks at her like she's some kind of angel. When she speaks again her voice is soft and paired with the smallest of smiles. "May I buy you a drink, Captain?"

"Make it two," he replies, before turning to the rest of his group, "Sorry, fellas. I'll have to love you and leave you. We'll settle this another time." He claps one of them on the back before ignoring their protests and following her back to her table.

She orders more wine and watches him examine her more closely.

"So what's your name?"

"Ash."

She'd started going by Ashildr again, after the Doctor had left her for the second time. Going without a name had been part of how she lost herself, she was fairly sure, and having one did tend to come in handy from time to time.

The captain sticks his hand out. "Nice to meet you, Ash."

Vaguely amused, she shakes it and takes a moment to appreciate his firm grip. "And you, Captain."

"You can call me Jack," he says, winking, and she takes a moment to note with interest how he apparently has no issue with flirting with someone he believes to be male. It certainly points to him not being exclusively of the current time period (a couple of other time travellers she's met over the centuries have informed her that in the future, discrimination based on choice in companionship is all but nonexistent, which is something she finds intriguing and rather looks forward to).

"Alright then," she replies, smiling, "Jack. How did you and the Doctor meet?"

Jack seems vaguely surprised by the question, but goes along with it and chuckles. "I tried to con him and it went wrong." The wine arrives and she sips hers while eyeing him curiously over the top of her cup.

"How so?"

"I ended up travelling in his ship with him and Rose after mine got blown up. Definitely not part of the plan."

"Rose?" The word escapes her mouth a moment before her mind answers the question it poses. "Oh. One of his other Claras. Of course."

"Claras?" Jack inquires, frowning with what must be concern, likely for this Rose girl he knows but who is unimportant in the big picture.

"His companions," Ashildr says, not blinking, "Mayflies. Fleeting, but not without point."

The frown shifts, but doesn't disappear. It seems he's intelligent enough to understand or at least guess what she means by that. "What about you? How'd you meet the Doctor?"

"He saved my village," she tells him, "And me. But more than that, I probably shouldn't say. From what I can make out, I met a Doctor far further along in his timeline than yours. Can't have you spilling foreknowledge when you next see him. I may not be personally experienced with time travel but I know such a thing would be dangerous."

"Then why are we talking?" He retorts, taking a large gulp of his own wine.

She ignores his question and instead regards him with narrowed eyes. "Tell me the truth, Jack, if I were to take my pistol and shoot you through the chest, would you live?"

He stares, before cryptically replying, "The fact that you're asking makes me feel like you know the answer."

Ashildr smirks. "I'll take that as a yes, then. Good."

"Yeah, I guess you could say it's been coming in handy," he says, shrugging, "After thirty years of dying and waking up after, I'm getting used to it."

That catches her by surprise. "You die and then come back?" She asks, intrigued.

"What else were you expecting?"

"Perpetual rapid healing that doesn't allow time for death, possibly," she says with a shrug, as mildly as she can, like it's just a theory she's thought up on a whim instead of a reality she's been living for a thousand years.

Jack laughs a little. "I guess there's more than one way someone could live for a lot longer than they're meant to, huh?"

It takes all of her self-control not to wince. He hasn't even realised what his current state means. Thirty years. Only thirty. She can remember when it had only been thirty years, when the prospect was just living for a long time. When the idea of forever hadn't even  _begun_ to sink in.

It's funny, because she will always look so young, but she looks at him and sees someone akin to a child, who has yet to learn of the real world and the hardships it will bring him.

"You know, I was told I'd have to wait over a hundred years to see the Doctor again," Jack tells her, some of his cheer having faded, "I thought maybe you were some stroke of luck telling me the creepy girl with the tarot cards were wrong, but you're not, are you?"

"I'm afraid I've virtually no idea what your future holds," she says honestly, "Only what you are. And so long as you do not even know that-"

"So tell me!" He demands, but she just shakes her head, eyeing him with an empathy she hasn't given to anyone in centuries.

"You're still waiting for him." Ashildr's voice is very quiet and he looks at her with a sadness and longing that she remembers all too well. "I'm too early. There is little I can do for you."

It wasn't until a few seconds ago that she had realised seeing him had made her hope for a permanent friend or companion, despite everything the Doctor had told her. After all, surely one could have someone who understood,  _and_ someone who helped them see and appreciate the things they might overlook? One permanent, one temporary. All at once it had become her most desperate wish and now she has to face the fact that today is not the day it will be fulfilled provided it ever comes true at all.

With a sigh, she gets up to leave and he grabs her arm the moment he realises her intention.

"Wait, you can't just-"

Calmly, she unpries his grasp. "I'll see you again, Jack. Just not for some time."

This time when she goes to leave he makes no move to stop her, and she turns around at the door to give him one last smile.

"A word of advice, Captain," she says, and he lifts an eyebrow in question. She just smirks. "Keep the name."

That makes him laugh, and he lifts his cup to her. "Why wouldn't I? You don't mess with perfection."

She laughs a little when he winks at her. "Until we meet again, Captain."

After walking out of the pub, she doesn't think of him again until war breaks out across the entire world and she enlists to fight as man as she has done many times before. When in the trenches and all of the filth (which makes her yearn for older, simpler warfare), she wonders if he is fighting too, and watching his fellow soldiers die all around him just like she is.

The war ends and almost instantly another begins. This time she works as a spy instead, but still she spares a thought for him, just once or twice, and hopes that he hasn't lost too many friends and lovers in the conflict, but knows he will have.

The new century comes. People in government and the special forces whisper of a thing called Torchwood, becoming more prominent all the time, and occasionally she hears his name mixed in there. She waits. It still isn't time.


	2. 2008

The second time they meet is not part of her plan. It is still too early. But she'd been visiting Cardiff and crossed the path of a monster who had to be an alien, and naturally chased it. She's just cornered the thing and pressed a knife to its throat when his voice calls out to her.

"Who the hell are you?"

When she turns her head to see him standing at the mouth of the alley, he does a double take and comes to a complete standstill.

"You," he says.

"Me," she replies, her lips curling upward at what is a old joke with herself.

"How can you be here?"

It's difficult to hold a conversation  _and_ a rather large alien against an alley wall, so she slits the thing's throat to be done with it while making sure to dodge the spray of blood as best she can. She's had practice.

"If you haven't worked it out yet, I shan't be telling you," she tells him flatly, before taking a few steps towards him and analysing his face.

He actually seems as though he might have aged, just a fraction, and that's something she hadn't expected. What she had expected, however, she can see in his eyes - the time and the loss and the wariness. It's still only starting to set in with him, but it's still there, and a strange relief to see.

What year is it? 2008. Over a century since they had last seen each other.

"You look good," she says, giving him a small, teasing smile.

"You're a girl," is all that comes out of his mouth as his slightly widened eyes run over her. Her clothes are by no means hyper-feminine, but a jumper and jeans certainly don't disguise her sex like what she had been wearing at their first meeting had.

All the same, Ashildr rolls her eyes. "Usually, yes. I couldn't very well get a drink in a pub in 1903 as a girl, now could I? Not if I wanted any peace."

"Fair point," he admits, "But still."

They fall into a brief, uncomfortable silence. Ashildr is the one to break it. He, understandably, doesn't appear to know what to make of her yet.

"Has he returned for you yet?"

"Yeah, I've seen him." There's a sort of disappointment in his demeanour, and she gets the idea that it's very fresh for him yet, that second meeting, and that it went very similarly to her own.

"He didn't come for you at all, did he?" She asks, tilting her head at him. "He just happened to stumble into your path."

Jack blinks, and then nods. He seems tired, and she remembers the feeling well. She'd had time to harden herself before the Doctor had returned and rejected her. He'd not quite gotten enough.

"He did the same to me."

The captain looks up with shock, eyeing her in a new light somehow. "What did you do?"

"I begged him to take me with him. He refused. I was too much like him. He needed mayflies. Roses. Claras. Jos. Sarah Janes. Tegans. Aces. Marthas."

His eyebrows fly up at the last name and she sighs.

"Yes, I know about her. I'm keeping track of all of them, all of his leftovers," she explains, and his curiosity blooms visibly.

"Why? Who are you?" He asks. "Really."

Ashildr just gives him a miniscule and slightly apologetic smile. "I'm afraid, Jack, that we both have to wait a little while yet before I can answer that question."

He just frowns at her, face full of a disbelief that might have been amusing if it didn't make her feel sorry for him. She sighs and comes closer so that she can stretch up on her toes and press a fleeting kiss to his cheek.

"Until we meet again, Captain," she whispers, a hand on his arm, "And I am sorry for the losses you will endure before then, and all those that have already been."

As she walks away, she checks over her shoulder that he isn't trying to follow her, and sees that he is frozen, not having even turned around to watch her leave.

* * *

 Less than a year later, the Daleks invade Earth and she has quite a lot of fun blowing up some of the troublesome pepperpots with homemade explosives that she learned how to make from Ace McShane herself. She also doesn't realise how attached she has become to the sky above her until it is taken and then returned.

She learns of Donna Noble and goes out of her way to ensure the ginger woman encounters no alien threats that could endanger her mind. One time, she's caught by the grandfather and they end up having tea.

Then the children start speaking in unison. The whole world panics and she watches like a stone, all the while glad for her promise to never bear any more offspring. Within five days it is over, and Torchwood is rumoured to be destroyed.

When people stop dying, it's eerie. They are suddenly like her but still not, continuously alive but not whole because they aren't mended as they go. It's even more grotesque than her own condition. She shuts herself away in her big house with her money and food stocks and rides the whole thing out. It takes months but one day everything snaps back into place, and the world slowly recovers. She never thought she would be so relieved about humans having the ability to die, given how much she has cursed it in the past. Again, it is a case of not knowing the importance of something until it is gone and then, thankfully, brought back.

(Much, much later, she learns from Jack that during this time, he actually became mortal in a what had a been a flip in the morphic field of mortality. Whether the same had gone for her, she will never know, because she had actually managed to stay out of trouble and hadn't had a reason to notice any change at all.)

Seven years after Ashildr meets Captain Jack for the second time, the Doctor loses Clara Oswald, like he was always going to.

However inevitable, however similar to situations he has been in before, this one Ashildr is closer to, and it does - to her surprise - actually pain her to see how it breaks him. And yet, it doesn't stop him from eventually picking himself up and finding the next mayfly, as he always does.

Ashildr likes the mayflies, but still cannot quite bear to love and lose them (oh, she makes friends and has lovers, but never lets herself truly, properly, deeply love them).

Jack, she thinks, likely still tends to love them but is learning that one can only lose so many before taking a few steps back becomes necessary for continued sanity.

The Doctor, however, will never learn. He will throw himself in again and again, loving fiercely for that brief instant his mayfly is with him, not minding how each one's passing burns a new hole in him.

She can't be sure whether she admires or pities him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more part to go, but it won't be the end of my writing for these two, just the end to this story which was intended and written as a oneshot before I decided to do it in three parts.


	3. 2945/3241

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final part of this story, but I'll be back to write more of these two at some point.

The third time they meet is on a battlefield. It's the end of the 21st century and they're on opposite sides, Ashildr relishing how she doesn't need to be dressed like a man to fight this time. She cropped her hair short a few decades back and has been wearing it that way since, but she faces this battle with a shade of red lipstick that strikes the fear of God into the heart of man.

Both immortals are champions for their causes, more resilient and skilled than all their counterparts, so it makes sense that it doesn't take long for them to find themselves facing each other once the battle is underway. It takes mere seconds for them to recognise who is staring back at them.

"Jack?" Ashildr asks, genuinely surprised. They've both frozen.

"...Ash?"

It's been a long time since she's thought about him - she's been busy, wonderfully so, not needing to dwell on the past even in the slightest.

Now his eyes are familiar, old and wary but still not without some spark of life still simmering in there. It's only been a bit over two hundred years for him since he became immortal, she thinks, provided he's been on Earth this whole time and not been time travelling, but he's managed to live through more than enough to bring him almost to where she had been in 1651.

He's ready. It means he has suffered, and that isn't really a good thing, but there is something so soothing about seeing a part of herself reflected in him. A part of herself she's never seen in anyone, not even the Doctor, whose foreign nature and condescending attitude overshadowed any similarities they might have shared.

She finds herself grinning.

"It's good to see you."

He blinks, and then grins back. "You too." His eyes take in the barren wasteland around them, the dead land filled with fighting and bloodshed, truly seeing it now. "Wanna get out of here?"

She's been in the war too long, and nothing has ever sounded better than the chance to escape it with him.

When she nods, Jack stretches out his hand. Upon her taking it, he pulls them both so that their hands are on his wrist, which confuses her until they are abruptly somewhere entirely different. Her stomach turns and she has to jump back from him before emptying its contents all over the ground, but he pats her back and gives her a sympathetic look when she straightens up.

"Sorry," he says, with another grin, "Cheap and nasty time travel. Not great on the constitution."

"Have we travelled in time?"

The thought is too wonderful for her to accept immediately. But he nods and she throws her head back and lets out the most genuine laugh of delight she can even remember.

"Where are we?" The question escapes her quickly, with a childish glee that she hasn't known in centuries. The landscape around them is red and rocky and utterly alien, with buildings in the distance not quite like anything she's ever seen.

"Rojen, little moon on the other side of the galaxy with some of the best beer around. And it's the year 3241."

Actual physical tears spring to her eyes and she's so shocked upon recognising the sensation that she just stares at the wetness on her fingers with wonder. She can't remember the last time she cried. But she's missed it. It's not exactly happy crying, this time, but it's not entirely sad crying either.

"Hey, are you okay?" Jack asks, staring down at her with concern and putting a hand on her shoulder.

She blinks at him, too awed to do much else. "I did it. I got away. Thank you."

Protecting Earth and its people from the Doctor is a job she has taken seriously and it holds a special place in her heart. It will always be home. But the urge to at least briefly be able to get away and not be stuck in the same straight line on the same singular planet has never left her. And now here she is, standing on an alien moon, in a future she has not had to live every day to see.

Jack doesn't seem to quite understand, of course, but he will soon.

She sticks her hand out like he had done to her when they first met and gives him a large, genuine grin. "My name's Ashildr. And I've been waiting for you for a long time, Jack."

"Ashildr," he repeats slowly, smiling at her, "Beautiful name. But, we've met before and you just left both times. What's different now?"

She lets her hand come to rest on top of where his is still on her shoulder, and she looks at him with a softness she hasn't offered anyone in a long time. "You are," she says simply, "You're ready. You're like me."

He hesitates, searching her face, and something clicks in him, like he's seeing her properly for the first time. "Perpetual rapid healing of injuries." His eyes are wide as he repeats her words from so long ago. "You're immortal."

Ashildr smiles at him. "Yes, I am. And I was hoping you might be in need of a friend. As I am."

He seems lost for words, too busy staring at her like she's some kind of dream. It's somehow bizarre, annoying, and flattering all at once. Still, she knows he'll get used to it eventually.

Ashildr puts her hands on her hips. "Now, will you buy me a drink? We have a lot to talk about. If you want. But I'm thinking that if I'm interested in hearing your story, you might be interested in hearing mine."

Jack finally shakes his head to clear it, and when he looks at her some of his overly cheerful demeanour is gone, replaced by something more genuine. He's realised he doesn't need to lie to her.

"I'd like that," he says, a small smile on his lips and a tired sort of relief in his eyes, "And I feel like we're gonna bring a whole new meaning to the phrase  _it's a long story_." She laughs slightly and holds out her hand to him in invitation, and he takes it as they begin to walk across the red dirt towards the city in the distance.

"I imagine we will."


End file.
